


if you're lost in this darkness i'll carry your throne

by MissSpock



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Achilles Yuri Plisetsky, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Background Relationships, Background Victuuri - Freeform, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Iliad AU, M/M, Multi, Patroclus Otabek Altin, The TSOA au that literally no one asked for, Tragedy, but before that, but you know what, otayuri - Freeform, patrochilles au, song of achilles, song of achilles au, tags will probably continue being added as the next chapter comes out, unnecessarily poetic prose
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-09 02:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10401282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissSpock/pseuds/MissSpock
Summary: In truth, however, this is the reason Otabek notices Yuri first: golden curls, tumbling over sharp, blue eyes, chin lifted in defiance.Beautiful, he thinks, his own dark hair a mess around his ears, arms hanging limp and awkward at his sides, clumsy legs bending, smarting where the instructor corrects his posture with harsh discipline.  Beautiful, but fierce. A soldier’s grace.An unnamed emotion wells up in him.(His father is a king, and the son of kings. Soon, Otabek will not be even that.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to do this with Victuuri at first, but then I decided that Otayuri fits better, so now Victor and Yuuri are Odysseus and Penelope but I may take artistic license bc i'm still unsure whether or not I want Yuuri physically IN this fic. i'VE BEEN WORKING ON THIS FOR LIKE A MONTH NOW and i'm only posting it bc *glares* SOMEONE was going to call me out in my oWN DAMN HOUSE 
> 
> speaking of artistic license: I had to mash YOI and TSOA together, coherently, so we can expect some differences in terms of canon for both. I had to somehow squish Yuri's personality into a more Achilles-esque manner, forgive me if there is (slightly) less directly written swearing. TSOA too, is not followed to a T. I'm mashing the two together and working off of what i remember from reading the book (like a month ago lol) so it's not going to be Super Accurate Probably. 
> 
> Also just a side note. Yuri and Otabek are the same age in this fic. The rest of the age differences apply.

He’s very young when he first meets Yuri Plisetsky.

Otabek would be hard-pressed to miss the boy, limbs drawn taut like a bowstring, movements slow and deliberate with an unearthly grace, face as rigid and pale as the circlet upon his brow.

In truth, however, _this_ is the reason Otabek notices Yuri first: golden curls, tumbling over sharp, blue eyes, chin lifted in defiance.

 _Beautiful,_ he thinks, his own dark hair a mess around his ears, arms hanging limp and awkward at his sides, clumsy legs bending, smarting where the instructor corrects his posture with harsh discipline.   _Beautiful, but fierce. A soldier’s grace._

An unnamed emotion wells up in him.

In the mirror, he catches his father’s gaze, dark and heavy. The weight grows in his chest. Otabek chalks it up to disappointment, maybe. Disappointment, that’s it. Disappointment that he is too slow and this years’ games will ultimately be a loss, disappointment that he fades like the rest of them against the cold, golden light that is Yuri, disappointment that Yuri doesn’t lift his eyes, blue, speckled gold, to meet his gaze even once.

(It is, in fact, _longing,_ he’ll find out, years later.)

To his father, it doesn’t matter if princes are beautiful, only that they are strong, proud, and honorable. Otabek longs to be the quiet kind of strength, beautiful, and cool, like pale spring morning.

They don’t see eye to eye, even then.

(His father is a king, and the son of kings. Soon, Otabek will not be even that.)

*

When it inevitably happens, he is unsurprised. He is no more than a remnant of a bad memory, the aftertaste in his father’s mouth from the bitter cup of an arranged marriage. Otabek has known this from the beginning. As for the reason, well; he tries not to think about that, lest he goes mad.

His father decides it personally. He is to be banished, he’s told. Stripped of his title, his name, sent away to fend for himself elsewhere. No longer anyone’s son, no longer belonging anywhere.

Otabek doesn’t cry, or put up a fuss, and instead lets them do what they will to him. At the age of eleven, he’s too tired to fight. They shave the sides of his head, dress him in simple but warm clothes, and let him go.  

He is unsure of what he misses—or at least, what he is supposed to. It’s different, on the journey there. “There” being relative, of course, to where he has been. It’s supposed to be his punishment, he knows.

But there’s something freeing about not being a prince anymore. About not having a name to live up to. About not having anyone to disappoint, except himself.

Nikolai Plisetsky is the king of Pthia. His son, the previous prince, had a complicated marriage with a minor goddess, a sea nymph, Lilia, and then disappeared in one of his ventures. Nikolai and his deity daughter-in-law dislike each other most days of the year, and their arguments always end up catching the attention of at least one god when she inevitably seeks refuge in the sea, but they tolerate each other now, for the sake of Yuri.

When Otabek arrives, he is told that Nikolai is away. He is redirected to the side room, and schools his face into a careful, blank mask, before he is led in.

The second time he meets Yuri Plisetsky, the latter is sprawled across a bench, limbs stretched loose like a cat’s. His arm is thrown over his face, and a lyre balances precariously on his stomach, string as golden as his hair.

It can be a scene from a sculpture, Otabek thinks. That same effortless grace from years ago presents itself even more fluidly on relaxed limbs, chest rising and falling lazily in the afternoon sun.

The silence stretches across them.

“What is your name?” the prince is the first to speak. He turns on to his side, hair spilling into his eyes, questioning and sharp, like threads on a tapestry.

“…Otabek.” He swallows. His hands curl into fists, sweat manifesting on the insides of his palms. He feels exposed, laid bare, like he’s given his entire self in one syllable, awkward and obvious, all obtuse lines and nerves.

“Otabek.” The prince doesn’t seem to notice, running the name over his tongue slow and careful, as if he’s tasting wine for the very first time. “My name is Yuri.” A pause, then a fierce, feral grin, sharp enough to draw blood, but bright enough to blind. “Welcome to Pthia.”

*

The prince has an infamous temper. He prefers to train alone, swears like a sailor, and frowns a lot. Still, he is well loved. Something about him rallies others to his side, draws them in like moths to a flame, Otabek included.

The others are kind. They don’t know much about his predicament, don’t know exactly why he’s here. They welcome him, with open arms, as just another. They don’t know what he’s done. The other boys try to draw him into conversation, but Otabek is more comfortable sitting and watching.  It’s still difficult, but infinitely less so now that he no longer has a million eyes fixed on him at all times. When he trains with the others, he tries his best, and that is enough. After all, he’s no great fighter. No one cares about one more serving boy, with no accomplishments to distinguish him except for a name that isn’t even his.

Yuri’s brows crinkle whenever he sees Otabek, delicate features twisting into something… _other_.

Otabek can never quite make up his mind whether Yuri hates him or not, though he thinks there’s very little reason to. Even before, Otabek has been insignificant. Now, they are not even equals. Still, he feels the prince’s gaze burning holes in the back of his skull in the dining hall. They exchange nothing but nods of greeting, deferential bows from Otabek and barely an inclination of the head from Yuri, even when they share the same table. But always, Yuri’s eyes are on him.

He doesn’t know why.

It scalds, almost. The feeling of someone’s gaze, warm on his cheek. Something lurks in the pit of his stomach, tastes bitter on his tongue like shame. Not only does Yuri Plisetsky have a soldier’s grace. He has a soldier’s eyes, always watching, wary, looking for any sign of weakness.

But Yuri is everywhere, invading every pore of Otabek’s existence, every second of this new life, too big and too bright and too beautiful to look away from. Around the others, Otabek simply fades. Around Yuri, he still feels that same, hollow longing, growing deep in his chest.

He resents it, almost, the way Yuri stares, and stares, and stares, and never says anything. It makes him want to tear at the hair on his head.

This is meant to be punishment after all.

The others find out what he’s done, eventually. They don’t treat him differently—at least they don’t try to. But he can feel the awkwardness behind some smiles, the stiffness of extended hands. All of it grows inside him, grows and grows and grows until he’s surprised there is no tree bursting from his lips, red and purple with the overwhelming headiness of summer. It’s too much, and too hot. His head spins in the light, pomegranate seeds spilling onto the floor like blood.

This is how Yuri finds him: leaning against a tree, in the corner of the garden, staring stoically at the scene before him. This is how he knows, because that feeling is once again there, pinned at the back of his head, and his stomach flips. He doesn’t know if he feels sick or lightheaded or both, but he forces himself to look up.

“So this is where you are,” Yuri speaks. There is no particular inflection, no particular tone of voice that indicates anything different. Instead he sounds like he always does, and this wounds him somehow, more than strain, or even derision in his voice ever could have.

Otabek grits his teeth against the taste in his mouth. “What are you doing here?”

“…I’ve come to find you. You’re missing your drills.”

He doesn’t buy that, not one bit.

“What about it?” Otabek feels defiance surging in his veins. There’s shame also: he knows he is behaving like a wounded animal, but he can’t help but want to bite, want to draw blood.

Yuri doesn’t recoil, however. Instead, a crease appears between his eyebrows. “The master is going to whip you.”

“Let him then.”

The crease deepens.

Otabek bites through clenched teeth. “ _Why are you here?”_

The bushes beside them rustle. Yuri startles, then ducks.

Otabek is startled out of his rut. He raises a questioning eyebrow.

Yuri shushes him.

Singing voices, deceptively soft, invade the glade.

Otabek’s brows furrow.

“The serving girls,” Yuri whispers by way of explanation.  “Grandfather sent them after me. He means well, but…”

Otabek is a little taken aback. Is this what Yuri does, on a daily basis?

Yuri seems to read his thoughts, and his pretty features twist into that something _other_ again, and this time, Otabek thinks, maybe it isn’t hatred after all.

He blinks. “Do you…want to get out of here?”

Yuri bites his lip. He looks back, at the horde of girls that must have followed him out, then back at Otabek, face grave, like a man about to be executed. “Ok.”

He lets Otabek put a hand on his wrist, lets himself be tugged away.

They lose the horde in the twist and turn of the gardens, and spend the afternoon sitting in companionable silence on the fortress overlooking the sea. Yuri plucks figs from the trees and Otabek watches, mesmerized as he tosses them, one after the other, into the air.

(Otabek doesn’t mention their first meeting, years and years and years ago. He thinks, watching Yuri, lines blurred under the rose-tinted light of the setting sun, that it’s something best kept to himself, locked away like the glittering tide drawn back into the ocean. Instead, he extends a hand.)

(Yuri looks to him. The edges of his face catch the light. His eyes are dark as he takes it. )

_(“Will you be friends with me or not?”)_

“Come on. The master is probably looking for you. I’ll bring you to my lessons. You won’t be in trouble then.”

Something echoes, on the wind, like a half forgotten song. Maybe Otabek has lived this day before. He doesn't know anymore.

*

 He becomes the prince’s companion.

This is new, apparently. When he’s informed, King Nikolai looks…surprised.

Later, Otabek is told that Yuri has never taken a companion before, snapped and fought anyone who tries to even get close. Otabek himself doesn’t have many friends, growing up.

And yet their shared existence is almost thoughtless, easy. They fall into it like an infant falls into breathing, as if that is what they are meant to do from the beginning. They go to lessons together. Yuri teaches Otabek to balance, to stand on his toes, to lift one foot behind the other.

(Then there are the private lessons. The prince trains alone, Otabek has been told.  Anya, or Georgi, or someone, let the prophecy slip. The Oracle of Delphi has proclaimed it. One day, Yuri is going to be the greatest warrior in the world. Otabek understands. There are games, and then there is war.)

He doesn’t know how to feel about that, just like he doesn’t know how to feel about sharing space. He wakes up every morning to Yuri, sometimes with Yuri’s hair in his mouth when they return to their rooms too late, too dark, and fall, exhausted, into the same cot.

It’s a little overwhelming, the sunlight streaming in through the window and falling across them. Blinding. On those mornings, Otabek lies still, like statues around city squares, and he watches. Yuri’s hair fans out across the pillow. His brows are smooth, as are the corners of his mouth. His dark golden lashes flutter against a soft, pink cheek, and his lips fall open, breathing drafts of warm air against Otabek’s neck.

Otabek watches, and his stomach twists itself into knots, constricts until his chest aches with a dull pain and he struggles to breathe. It hurts, in a way that grounds him. It hurts, but Otabek wouldn’t know what to do if it doesn’t.

Sometimes, though, Otabek wakes to an empty room.

He knows what this means, knows not to look for Yuri’s presence for the rest of the day. He knows that Yuri has gone to see his mother.

Lilia Baranovskaya is a minor sea goddess. They say she bore Yuri to satisfy some kind of deal the old prince had made with the gods. The first time Otabek sees her it’s by accident. He draws the short straw and has to fetch Yuri to go back to the castle to a conference with the king and happens upon mother and son, standing at the beach.

Yuri looks nothing like his mother, he decides immediately, and is almost glad for it. If Yuri is the dawn, then his mother is every bit the tide at dusk, rising and falling with the moon. Hair dark and ink-green, pulled into a tight coil at the crown of her head, eyes, glittering and black like pearls, she is built of sharp angles and harsh lines, unforgiving and unpredictable and _cold_ , like the sea.

Her eyes are on Otabek and her lips, blood red (like pomegranates, like the split head of a boy Otabek looks over, once), pull down. “Otabek of the house of Altin.” Her voice crashes, syllables fitting strangely in the air, and he has the distinct sense that she has seen _everything,_ parted skin and flesh and bone through to the very core of his soul. Her gaze lingers on him for one, breathless moment. There is conflict in her eyes, sorrow and anger and the fierce protectiveness of a mother, and he doesn’t understand, won’t understand, not yet. When she speaks again it is without the full weight of malice, as if she is simply observing. “You are not worthy.” Her lips part, and her teeth are eerie and unnaturally white, like foam dashed on the waves, like pearls. “You will die very soon.”

Yuri starts sharply but Otabek doesn’t protest. What use is protest, against a goddess?

Later, when they are together again, alone again (because that is something they _are_ , now), Yuri confesses. “She wants me to be a god.”

Otabek’s brows furrow. “Do you want to?” There are many other questions, brimming at his lips. He bites down hard on the inside of his cheek, swallows it down again. “Be a god, I mean?”

Yuri rolls his eyes, voice dripping with sarcasm. “What do you think, Beka?”

It didn’t matter what he thinks. But he doesn’t say that.

*

The years: they pass.

Otabek wants. He suspects he knows what for, but he never ventures that far, never plunges that deep. Instead, he watches, silent, from the sidelines.

*

In hindsight, there might have been a better place. Hindsight is not worth much, not in a world where time is concrete and unmanipulable. (Zeus’s father could manipulate time. But that is a long, long ways ago, and in Otabek’s experience, fathers are not always kind.)

They are by the sea – that much, at least, is sure. He doesn’t remember much of the rest, doesn’t remember if the sand beneath his feet scratches at the skin of his knees, of his elbows, doesn’t remember if the wind carries sand into his eyes, into his nose, into his mouth. All he remembers is the sun, blinding and bright above him for one moment before he gives in and presses forward, fingers tangled in golden curls as he closes the distance between them.

The world blurs into pink and brown and gold and blue, soft hues of loveliness and confusion and the taste of honey and wine and salt mixing on his tongue.

It lasts only a moment, and then they pull apart and Yuri stares, wide-eyed.

The hiss of the sea fills the air between them.

Otabek’s chest constricts.

Yuri rises to his feet, hesitates only a second before he is turning and running.

*

Yuri’s – gone.

“I saw,” Lilia Baranovskaya says.

“I know,” his eyes are glassy.

“This is for his own good.”

“I know,” he repeats, but in his head, he is dreaming – he is dreaming of afternoons, years and years ago, the sharpness overtaking Yuri’s eyes again, ever the soldier, fighting tooth and nail, but always carrying the grace of the gods upon his shoulders.

(“Do you want to be? A god, I mean?”)

(“What do you think, Beka?”)

What he thinks – doesn’t matter.

**Author's Note:**

> Scream with me about yoi @erosie.tumblr.com
> 
> Leave me a comment please they feed my soul (my soul is starving)


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